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What it’s like for a teenager to try to emancipate herself: Child Protective Services is meant to protect children from abusive homes and provide safe alternatives with consistent monitoring but often the system fails children. I only knew that the institution was a machine, one capable of destroying lives and spirits in its rigid methodology. […]

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Longreads Best of 2012: Howard Riefs

Howard Riefs is a prolific Longreader and a communications consultant in Chicago.   Best Series This Land, Dan Barry, The New York Times    “The dateline is Elyria, Ohio, a city of 55,000 about 30 miles southwest of Cleveland. You know this town, even if you have never been here. A place buffeted by time and the economy, a place […]

Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story

What Life Was Like for an Executioner’s Family in the 16th Century

Joel F. Harrington | The Faithful Executioner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | March 2013 | 15 minutes (3,723 words) Below is an excerpt from the book The Faithful Executioners, by Joel F. Harrington, which was recently featured as a Longreads Member Pick. Thanks to our Longreads Members for making these stories possible—sign up to join Longreads […]

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